Title: Thoughts About the Iraq War & Our Firearms Industry
Author: Andrew Molchan
Date: Fri June 10th, 2005
Dear Friends,
As most of the regular readers of this column know, in 1964 I predicted that America would lose the Vietnam War. Back in 1964 I was more grand strategy insightful than 99% of the officers in the Pentagon. Over 40 years later, nothing has changed.
Long-term predictions, 5 to 50 years, are where God gave me the most talent. However, short term I sometimes do pretty good. Over a year ago the book, The Coming Democratic Majority, had recently been on the New York Times Best Seller List. In the December 2003 issue of AFI, written a year before the November 2004 presidential election, on page 38 I wrote, "The conventional wisdom is that a left-wing socialist government will come to power in both the White House and Congress…. What is the message of the left-wing Democratic Party? Their message is raise taxes so the government becomes richer... I predict that the Democratic Party will be replaced." A year later the Democrats failed to win the White House, Senate, Congress or the majority of governorships. The four largest states: California, Texas, New York and Florida have Republican governors.
I was correct about the Euro and the dollar. On the front protective cover of the June 2003 issue of AFI, I wrote. "This week the Euro traded above 117 to the dollar. Many of the talking heads on TV were surprised. They didn’t know what was happening. I predicted the raise of the Euro over two years ago. I predicted that it will someday become the dominate currency in the world….The Europeans are going to play the same paper game with the Euro that America has played with the dollar since WWII." In the December 2003 issue I wrote. "The long term trend line of the dollar will be down against the Euro, and that will give a slight advantage to American made products."
I never bought the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) con game. I said the CIA had been infiltrated (and still is), and the CIA had forgotten the basics of espionage.
Back in 1968, the year I left the Army and went into the firearms industry, I wrote "Andrew’s Modern Military Axiom, Parts One and Two." This was (is) the grand strategy principle I believed governed (and still governs) the American military from the end of WWII into the future. The Axiom states: (Part 1) The American military can fight almost any tactical battle, against almost any enemy, almost anywhere in the world, and win. (Part 2). The American military, except with the smallest and most isolated locations, cannot decisively win any long-term shooting war, anywhere."
Now, somebody might say, "Andy, didn’t we just win a shooting war in Afghanistan? Did we? Or, did al Qaeda retire from the battlefield, for a while?
I voted for President Bush, but the symbolism of his premature Iraq victory party was a paradigm summary of America’s problems. The President landing on a grossly useless trillion-dollar weapons system to declare victory in a struggle he didn’t understand.
One year ago, in the February 2004 issue on page 37, I wrote. "After WWI, Turkey as Germany’s ally was defeated, the British occupied what is now Iraq and set up a headquarters in Baghdad. The British Army found itself in almost the exact military situation the American Army finds itself today. There was a very nasty insurgent-guerrilla war. Then as now, there was a relatively big local population with elements that were hostel and a relatively small British force. After four years of the British fighting the Baghdad guerrillas the British Army pulled out in 1922. As military trivia, it was the first major military troop airlift because the roads going south from Baghdad to safe British territory in Basra and Kuwait were too dangerous for trucks."
Apparently most people at the Pentagon, CIA or State Department never read any history. I’d suggest the history of the British in Kenya in the 1950s. It won’t be easy because all the written records of everything were destroyed before the British left. The British in Kenya, in the 1950s, is a history of concentration camps, forced unemployment and semi starvation, government via lots of barbed wire fences and over 1200 hangings. Here is the question the Pentagon, CIA and White House should be asking: "If the failed British programs of government via barbed wire, unemployment and murder didn’t work in Kenya, Burma, Iraq and several other places for the British, and basically the same thing didn’t work for the French in Algeria, for the Portuguese in Angola, and aren’t working for the Israelis in Gaza, exactly how and why is it going to work for America in Iraq?"
Washington D.C. just doesn’t get it. Victory in Iraq is a sales operation. Victory is communications, advertising and persuasion. Salesmanship is the key to victory. Guns and bullets will only buy time for effective salesmanship, but if there’s no effective persuasion then we’ve already lost. The maddening paradox is that America already has the biggest collection of slick political manipulators in the world. To win all we have to do is use and apply what we already have in abundance.
Let me pause for a second and remind people that I’m very pro-American. I’m pro-American but very anti-defeat. If Washington D.C. was 100% correct about everything, we wouldn’t have any problems, right? Massive denial wasn’t a solution in Vietnam, and it’s not a solution today.
In the June 2004 issue on page 38, I wrote. "The Pentagon wants to fight a high-tech war with high-tech systems because that’s where the Pentagon is strong. But the Muslim guerillas aren’t stupid. They are not going to play our game with our rules. This ninth crusade is a low-tech war and very winnable by the guerillas just like the Vietnamese won with low-tech weapons. The real military objective of al Qaeda is something the Pentagon isn’t even thinking about. Al Qaeda’s ultimate objective is the destruction of the American dollar. By bleeding America financially, and by running up America’s already massive debts, al Qaeda is already winning."
Some Americans might say, "Well, isn’t the objective democracy?" Washington’s view of democracy is simple minded like all of their other Middle East views. Hitler was elected in a fair democratic election. If you ask the people in the Middle East what they want, democracy is way, way down on their list. The vast majority of people in Iraq want protection, jobs for their young people, economic growth, health care, hope for the future, and national respect. If we had true and real democracy in the Middle East, then undemocratic Egypt and Saudi Arabia would probably have anti-American governments.
There are many painful changes in our future. Since we are talking about war and the Pentagon, America’s Generals and Admirals are going to have to be held responsible for their decisions. When Japan lost the Pacific war it wasn’t because the Japanese privates and sergeants didn’t fight and die where they were told to fight. Japan lost because of a massive failure of courage at the very top. The Japanese Generals and Admirals let a million Japanese women, children and old people die rather then change their status. When Germany lost WWII it wasn’t because the German privates and sergeants didn’t fight and die. Germany lost because of delusional pig headiness at the very top. When America lost in Vietnam it wasn’t because American privates and sergeants didn’t go out into the jungle, fight and die. It was arrogance combined with intellectual cowardice at the very top. Today in 2005 we have exactly the same problem. At the very top, we have intellectual cowardice combined with a total inability to change.
One of the reasons we are in trouble today is because Robert McNamara and everyone in that group wasn’t charged with criminal negligence, and didn’t go to jail. McNamara was rewarded with the presidency of the World Bank, and all the Generals and Admirals retired with big pensions. If there’s no pain or down side to massive mistakes, then institutions never change.
America’s Founding Fathers were the greatest collection of political geniuses in the world. They wanted civilians in charge of Departments, like the Defense Department, so they’d be outsiders and would fire the dead heads and kick ass. In my opinion people like Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell aren’t ass kickers, their apologists for fossilized systemic failure.
Looking back over 5000 years of military and political history one of the many lessons is that yesterday’s big military winners build the wrong weapons systems for future wars. Today in 2005, in my opinion, 60% of the Pentagon’s weapon’s systems by dollar volume can be summarized in two words, "mental masturbation." The Pentagon, today, has history’s greatest collection of worthless military status symbols.
America’s Generals and Admirals are being wined and dinned by the military-industrial complex. At the expensive parties the big defense companies talk to them about future job positions after they retire. All they have to do is help approve the next $150 million for each new fighter, or the next $1 billion dollars each new bomber, or the next $300 billion aircraft carrier. (I guess Admiral Yamamoto’s battle fleet is coming across the Pacific to attack California?) While the cocktail parties are going on in Washington D. C., in Iraq American privates and sergeants are stealing manhole covers, and going through the junkyards trying to find pieces of steel to hang on the sides of their Humvees and trucks, so they aren’t killed when the roadside bombs explode.
Over a dozen years ago Neale Perkins of Safariland developed Kevlar kits that went into the side rocker panels, door air spaces, and floor panels in cars and trucks. They were, and are, light weight and relative cheap and greatly increase the bullet resistance of any vehicle. Instead of making the Humvees more bullet and bomb resistant for a few dollars, the Pentagon spent a trillion dollars for new fighters and the coming air battle with the Luftwaffe over Germany.
How’s this as an example of Pentagon management. The old half-tracks the Army had in WWII, that cost $1,800 in 1944, would have saved more American lives than the $40,000 plus Humvees the Pentagon sent to Iraq.
I was recently talking to Dan Evans of Scopecoat. Mr. Evans is a Vietnam veteran 1968-69, and started Scopecoat ten years ago. Scopecoat today has 40 sizes
of scope covers. Anyway, Mr. Evans said a Black Hawk helicopter pilot called
him. The pilot and his crew were leaving for Iraq. They had their M4s but no protection for their scopes. The pilot was going to use his own credit card, and money to buy scope covers for his crew. Mr. Evans told him to keep his money and sent the scope covers. The day I wrote this article I double-checked with Mr. Evans as to the above story’s accuracy. He had just received a call from a soldier ordering 4 scope covers going to an A.P.O. in Iraq. Some GI’s, the people who are doing the actual fighting and dying, are using their own money to buy equipment!
Scopecoat does sell to the military and they are ordering more of his product. Mr. Evans wanted to say that he sells to the military at his lowest possible price.
Here is a true story that summarizes 2004 in Iraq. An American soldier in Iraq had a Trijicon Scope on his M-16. He’s holding his rifle in front of him with the scope over his chest. Suddenly an AK47 sniper bullet hits his scope. The Trijicon scope is totally destroyed but stops the bullet. Thanks to the toughness of the scope he had no injuries. After recovering from the shock, and looking at the scope and angle of the bullet, it’s clear that if the scope hadn’t been there the bullet probably would have gone into his heart. So the scope saved his life. That’s the happy part of the story. Here’s the shocking part that makes you think. The scope and mount was a gift from the soldier’s father. His father bought the scope with his own money, and shipped it to his son in Iraq.
Some 30 years ago there was a mountain of conclusive testing data to prove that if you give soldiers scopes on their rifles you have a 100% improvement in combat hits. The old time shooters like Colonel Charly Askins, who gave me my first deer rifle, knew 60 years ago that scopes will increase a soldier’s hits by 100%. What were the people at the Pentagon doing during the last 60 years?
Some Penagon apologists might say they won the cold war against communism. If 90% of the world had turned communist it still would have collapsed of its own unworkable dead weight exactly like Friedrich Hayek predicted in 1944.
Likewise, if we don’t give the fundamentalist Muslims reasons to attack America, then eventually fundamentalist Islam will collapse of its own unworkable dead weight. The world is now interconnected and no government, no matter how ruthless, can long sustain a medieval society in the 21st Century.
In grand strategy you consistently ask, "What does America need to survive? And, what doesn’t American need to survive?" America doesn’t need at lot of things we presently think we need. We don’t need on the ground control of Iraq to survive. Just like we never needed Vietnam to survive. Harry Truman never followed General Douglas MacArthur’s advice to attack "Red" China during the Korean War. President Truman knew that America didn’t need China dead for America to survive. Truman didn’t equate killing people with progress. Today, Red China is a major source of increasing American living standards by providing thousands of products at low prices, and buying our Treasury Bonds by the hundreds of billions.
Our firearms industry has dozens of products that can help our soldiers win battles and keep them alive. E.A.R. that’s mention in this issue, has hearing protection/enhancers that should be standard issue. Why should soldiers suffer serious hearing loss, half of their life or more, because we can’t spend $40 for each GI in combat? With night vision our troops can see at night. With E.A.R.’s product they (military and police) also have a hearing enhancement advantage. Shooting/protection glasses should also be standard issue. Our soldiers need a new rifle, a new caliber and new kinds of advanced ammunition. The firearms industry has all kinds of training aids, scopes, iron sights, night sights, lasers, lights, holsters, slings, vests, grips, rails, mounts, bipods, covers for dust, rain and snow protection, bags, belt systems, knives, camping, cleaning and protection compounds and cleaning kits, targets, field gunsmithing tools, advanced magazines, loaders, shooting gloves, advanced metal treatment methods and surfaces, improved barrels, range finders, binoculars, the list could go on for ten pages, you name it. At SHOT, there are a good 300 manufacturers with equipment that can help a combat soldier.
The air force and navy don’t win wars. They have been grossly over rated all though the 20th Century. Ground troops with guns are what win wars. America didn’t lose in Vietnam because our air force and navy were too small compared to the Vietcong’s. The American firearms industry has the biggest and best collection of combat ground soldier equipment in the world. Washington D.C. has to stop being penny wise with the ground troops and dollar wasteful on trillion dollar systems that aren’t needed.
Future Issues. Going back to grand strategy, in the July issue (July 4th is my birthday) I’m going to use my ability to see the future and I’m going to outline a plan to defeat America. I’m sure I won’t be telling our enemies anything they aren’t already thinking about. However, I’d bet there isn’t one person in a 1000 at the Pentagon, CIA or FBI who’s given any thought whatsoever to what I’ll outline in July.
In the January 2005 issue I gave you a ton of valuable advice about corporations and how to protect yourself from legal judgments. The March and April issues of AFI will be the SHOT Show news issues. In either May or June I’ll tell you things about the credit cards you have in your wallet that you never knew existed. They are potential ticking time bombs. I’ll tell you why, and I’ll tell you how to protect yourself. American Firearms Industry during the year has unique and highly valuable information that is directly applicable to your life. Full P.G.R.A. membership is only $55. A one-year subscription only is $35 a year. The price would be worth it at ten times that amount because your CPA and lawyer, who you pay during the year, won’t tell you what AFI will.
If you want to join the Association, or only subscribe, we certainly will appreciate your help and support. Thank you for your help.
Andrew Molchan,
Professional Gun Retailers Association
INDUSTRY
INSIGHTS
